John D. Mitchell's Blog

Business Archives

JavaOne 2007, Startup Camp 2

Is this really JavaOne? Walking around downtown San Francisco in May wearing a t-shirt and shorts and not freezing to death? Record setting heat must be boiling my brain!

I spent most of Monday at the Startup Camp 2 festivities over at the old Argent Hotel. Startup Camp is an open space unconference hosted by Sun and run by the nice folks over at Mass Events Labs. If you've never participated in an open-space style conference, you definitely should -- but don't expect to just sit there -- it's really exactly what you make of it. Note that the notes from each section should eventually make it up to the wiki so check that out for more information.

I went to a session lead by Josh Berkus that was about MySql vs. PostgreSQL. It was much less contentious than I expected. :-) It's great to see PostgreSQL getting more exposure -- especially given how much (undue) credit MySQL gets around being "open source" when it's not completely true. I.e., when it comes down to it, the single biggest reason to chose one or the other is licensing. PostgreSQL's BSD license is a Very Good Thing(tm). In terms of performance, there's definitely a lot afoot with both projects... MySQL is getting better at vertical scaling and PostgreSQL is getting more horizontal support (for things like "clustering").

Another session that I went to was lead by Jason Hoffman of Joyent about the tradoffs of hosted vs. building and managing your own data centers especially as your service starts to grow and you need to start worrying about scale. What made this session cool is what open space conferences are all about -- audience participation. Lots of experienced folks in the audience sharing their war stories.

The money quote of the day came from Josh Berkus (gee, am I a stalker?): "Databases scale poorly." This basic sentiment came up over and over when talking about how to effectively and efficiently get better performance for those hard-earned (or hard-begged :-) startup dollars. Databases don't scale linearly in terms of cost. Moving business logic out of the database leads to up to a 5X improvement in terms of cost (according to a study by Sun). That's a big deal but I'll leave further exploration of that to a future blog.

The wackiest thing at Startup Camp 2 was the "Speed Geeking" general session. Think: speed dating for startups. Each startup that wanted to present itself was given a big round dinner table and had a few minutes to make their pitch/demo/whatever to each small group of interested people. I'm sorry but the Rate My Poop idea is not something that I even want think about -- I'm going to have nightmares.

I also attended a session on pricing of SaaS/"on demand" services. Alas, I hosed my notes of who was running that session -- my apologies. Lots of good discussion but two key takeways were to remember that it's not just "software" but also a "service" and that trust is a key component to any relationship.

JavaOne 2006: Questions

As JavaOne 2006 officially starts today, there are lots of excited attendees floating around with lots of questions in their heads: How do I write Java code to deal with all of these new multi-core chips? How do I create Java-based web services quickly and easily? Who's giving out the cool schwag? Where are the parties worth going to? What sessions should I attend? Is Ruby (and Ruby on Rails) really kicking Java's ass? Why hasn't Sun given me a T2000 server? Why is it so cold in San Francisco in May? What is Sun's marketing team going to try to shove down everybody's throat this year? You know, the usual gamut of questions. :-)

Of course, with Jonathan Schwartz taking over for Scooter, the key question for a lot of people is: "Will Sun 'open source' Java?" Well, perhaps a better way to phrase the question is: "How will Sun deal with the issue of 'open sourcing' Java? Will Sun continue pretending that Java is already "open source" or will they actually take a true leadership role in moving Java forward?

Frankly, given Jonathan's latest blog entry, it sounds like he's going to continue Sun's delusional posturing. If so, he's going to have lost his best opportunity to ensure Sun's continuance as a company, let alone as any kind of leader. We need look no further than the most recent round of SGI's implosion to see a very clear example of what happens when a once-dominant company gets so entrenched in their own delusions of grandeur that they fail to adapt to the reality all around them.

Hopefully, Sun will be able to overcome its own fear so as to be able to make the next step.

McNealy out, Schwartz in as Sun CEO

Yes, it's true. Scott "Scooter" McNealy is stepping down as CEO of Sun Microsystems. Sun may be doing better than previously but it's still losing real money. Worse, it lost most of its mindshare over the last 6 years.

Jonathan Schwartz will continue as President and become the top dog. Personally, I think this is a really good move. Jonathan has embraced a much more clueful approach, especially relative to the big, corporate behemoth that is Sun. :-)

A few weeks ago, I attened a Sun "VC Event" where they were pitching the new servers to VCs and their various portfolios companies down in the Valley. [The best part of getting there on time was getting time to chat with James Gosling because no suits are ever on time. :-?] Jonathan gave a strong pitch for Sun's new world view. Not just the words and slides but his presence and presentation gave off a much better tone than Scooter (let alone full-on psychos like Ballmer :-). Good luck!

Okay, honeymoon is over...

Hint to Jonathan: Sun sucks at follow through... Alas, I'm still waiting for delivery of a T2000 server to check out and there's nothing good about making people who really want to try out your products wait and wait and wait. But I'll talk a lot more about that stuff once I actually receive the demo box.

ObJava: The $64,000 question is still: what are you going to do with Java? Your presentation was full of lots of talk about how Sun is not only embracing but driving lots of open source but the family jewels, Java, is still firmly under lock and key.

McNealy out, Schwartz in as Sun CEO

Yes, it's true. Scott "Scooter" McNealy is stepping down as CEO of Sun Microsystems. Sun may be doing better than previously but it's still losing real money. Worse, it lost most of its mindshare over the last 6 years.

Jonathan Schwartz will continue as President and become the top dog. Personally, I think this is a really good move. Jonathan has embraced a much more clueful approach, especially relative to the big, corporate behemoth that is Sun. :-)

A few weeks ago, I attened a Sun "VC Event" where they were pitching the new servers to VCs and their various portfolios companies down in the Valley. [The best part of getting there on time was getting time to chat with James Gosling because no suits are ever on time. :-?] Jonathan gave a strong pitch for Sun's new world view. Not just the words and slides but his presence and presentation gave off a much better tone than Scooter (let alone full-on psychos like Ballmer :-). Good luck!

Okay, honeymoon is over...

Hint to Jonathan: Sun sucks at follow through... Alas, I'm still waiting for delivery of a T2000 server to check out and there's nothing good about making people who really want to try out your products wait and wait and wait. But I'll talk a lot more about that stuff once I actually receive the demo box.

ObJava: The $64,000 question is still: what are you going to do with Java? Your presentation was full of lots of talk about how Sun is not only embracing but driving lots of open source but the family jewels, Java, is still firmly under lock and key.

GPL v3, draft 1 released

The Free Software Foundation has released the first public draft of version 3 of the Gnu Public License. The rationale document might be a more interesting place to start reading to about what they've changed so far and why.

Updates:

Note that folks using non-Gecko based browsers are not able to view or add comments about the draft on the web site but you can submit comments via email.

For those who can't read the draft easily on the official website, Tim Bray has put up an easy to read version that is suitable for printing.

Simon Phipps and Danese Cooper co-wrote their notes from the release presentation.

Sun to open-source SPARC architecture

Sun's open-source evangelist, Simon Phipps says that "the Verilog source code, tools and more behind the UltraSPARC T1 (the "design point") will be released under an OSI-approved open source license next year." They will supposedly be trying to create a hardware development community around SPARC computer architecture via OpenSPARC.net.

Given that the SPARC architecture has, like MIPS, been relegated to the "who cares" leagues in recent years, this move is a chance for Sun to (try to) save its hardware-based lifestyle. Of course, it remains to be seen what all of the details are in terms of things like patent and trademark legal land mines.

Of course, for those following along, look at how Sun's "born again" take on open source is proceeding everywhere except for the Java core. That's an awfully good indication of where Sun thinks the real power is (and what they are afraid of losing their control of).

ObJava: Sun's David Dagastine shows benchmarks of running Java J2SE v5 on Sun UltraSPARC T1.

Code Naked

Finding yourself naked, in public, is a dream/nightmare that many people have. It could just be me but when I was first starting to program, I had a nightmare that not only was I coding naked but my code was naked, too. Partly in response to that, I became much more diligent about writing excellent code so that I'd never be embarrassed by my software.

Over the years, I've joked with various people that I "code naked" but most folks stop at the (all too frightening) image of me coding while naked. Alas, I've never thought about a more palatable phrase enough to come up with anything worth mentioning. Various industries like to use the term transparency but methinks that's too opaque and wishy-washy.

A student of Bob Koss comes to the rescue with the term Refrigerator Code:

It's code that you’re so proud of that you want to take it home and hang it on the refrigerator, right alongside of your children’s drawings.

On the other hand, one of the underlying reasons of Why Software Sucks is the fact that most software written is really what I call Toilet Code:

It's code that's so mediocre that when somebody encounters it, they just want to flush it down the toilet.

Sun nukes SISSL

Sun's "Chief Open Source Officer", Simon Phipps, just announced that Sun is retiring the Sun Industry Standard Source License. He's putting Sun's money where it's mouth is and actually getting rid of the license to help reduce the ridiculously rampant proliferation of "open source" software licenses.

Fer shizzle!

If you're interested in why license proliferation is so lame, read Larry Rosen's short paper, License Proliferation.

Communicating Conundrum

Kim Burchett posted a great story illustrating the Misunderstandings that happen in the software business. Hilarious, in a sad, scary, and all too true way.

Metcalfe's Law broken

Way back when, Bob Metcalfe, one of the creators of ethernet, coined a formula that says that the value of a network grows on the order of n². During the internet boom, that so-called "law" was used in bazillions of pitches to (attempt to) justify all sorts of aggressive growth strategies.

Andrew Odlyzko and Benjamin Tilly have recently written a paper, A refutation of Metcalfe’s Law and a better estimate for the value of networks and network interconnections which dissects Metcalfe's law (and Sarnoff's law). They also present arguments for a better rule of thumb: the value of a network grows on the order of n log (n). This new guideline seems to fit our intuition as well as actual practice much better.

Googlezon

EPIC 2014 is an 8 minute, Flash movie from the year 2014 about a very 1984-ish outcome to the juggernaut that is Google.

Hilarious, in a scary way. :-)

Belief of Control

Well, I am a sucker for discussions about risk and software development. There are some interesting tidbits in Tiwana and Keil's: the one-minute risk assessment tool article for the ACM's Queue magazine. Alas, there are some fundamental problems with the article. So, definitely read it, but with a few grains of salt :-).

First off, while they noted the (potential of) self-selection bias, that's buried in a sidebar.

In conjunction, they completely gloss over the fact that they are only dealing with the stated assessments of the participants (i.e., the upper-level managers) of these projects. That is, they miss the entire point that the stated reasons rarely coincide with the real reasons.

In addition, they only talked to high-level managers — where's the talk with the people actually doing the work?

Building on those mistakes, of course the outcome of the research supports the notion that the managers can exert a lot more control over the success or failure of projects. Now, you're probably nodding your head and agreeing — fine, that fits our underlying intuition but the article and those managers are making rationalizations — not revealing reality. The first problem with the rationalization is the Belief of Control. I.e., the belief that managers (and other people in positions of authority) have that they can control everything. [Though, I love the ending of the article with the paraphrase of the Alcoholics Anonymous prayer. :-)] On another hand, in the vast majority of projects, of course the managers can control the success or failure of the project — because the managers are the cause of most of the problems. That is, the managers consciously and unconsciously set things up to fail through e.g., ignorance, neuroses, politics, greed, and just plain incompetence. Even worse, as the project unfolds over time, the tendency of managers is to apply those same broken approaches to "fixing" the problem and thereby usually just make things worse.

"We have met the enemy and he is us." —Walt Kelly, Pogo

Anatomy of Insanity

CNet reports that Microsoft is offering $5 (yes, 5) for data loss due to it's new AntiSpyware software that's in beta testing. Gee, thanks. That will buy me a cup of coffee so I can calm down after you destroy my data. Yeah, sure.

This is another case of how Microsoft (and so many other organizations) just doesn't understand (or care) how enormous an impact their buggy software has on users. This goes part in parcel with the wonderful example in my old blog entry Anatomy of Insanity? Of course, they will claim that this offer is somehow helpful to the customers but, I must say, it's just plain insulting. Why not try something revolutionary like actually writing high-quality software?

Use less milk?

My little girl has this habit of pouring way too much milk into her bowl of cereal. Then, she whines and complains when we tell her to drink up the extra milk after the cereal is gone so it doesn't go to waste. Yesterday, she got quite snippy when I dared to suggest that she try pouring less milk into the bowl.

Gee, she sounds like a lot of managers and developers of software.

Though, to be more precise, in most software situations, it's not that they pour too much milk but, rather the converse: trying to eat way too much cereal for the given amount of milk. Of course, it gets even worse when we're asked to eat random weeds from the edge of the parking lot instead of cereal because the powers–that–be misheard some "guru" talking about the miraculous recuperative abilities of mountain goats who eat nothing but weeds.

In terms of software estimates, why are we, as an industry, so far off? Is it merely incompetence or perhaps fibbing to say what the suits want to hear or are there more subtle things going on, too? I think it's exactly the same problem that my little girl has... She can see the surface of a pile of cereal in her bowl and as she pours the milk, she sees the milk run off the surface and disappear, by the time she sees the milk level come up towards the surface of the cereal, it's too late.

Now, some folks might say to eat more, smaller bowls so you don't run into that milk hiding problem (which is related to the burning your mouth on the hot sauce hiding under the cool layer of cheese on your pizza :-). Others might advocate pouring some amount of milk into the bowl first and then pour the cereal to match. Anal-retentive types might do a myriad of studies (i.e., waste a lot of milk and cereal) to figure out some magical metric by which to precisely predict the proper amount of milk to use for the average cereal according to the preferences of some imaginary average person.

Me, I like an adaptive approach: Pour some cereal, pour some milk, mix it all up, and taste it. If there's too much milk, add a small amount of cereal. If there's too much cereal, pour a wee bit more milk. If it's exactly right, look for the Candid Camera folks (especially if I used up the last of the cereal and milk simultaneously :-). Gee, for some reason, this tastes the same as another process.

Bon apetit!

Passionately Curious

What do you really look at when you're hiring people?

Does your team fall into the various mental traps that Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his latest book, Blink? I.e., do you look for people who fit your conscious and/or unconscious biases? Wouldn't it help if, like the symphony committees, we only hired people based on their ability to code where we could not see them?

Does your team fall into the hiring hubris fallacy that Joel talked about recently? Is this just another example of the Lake Wobegon Effect where organizations are trying to make themselves feel better? Wouldn't it help if we only hired people we thought were better than us?

Does your team fall into the Certification Fallacy -- believing that a certificate means that a person is good/qualified/etc.? Do you only look for resumes that have the ridiculous laundry lists of keywords that the HR people can put into their filtering software? Wouldn't it help if we actually looked at what the actual work that a person has produced?

Or, is your team tragically hip and hires open-source commit sluts? Wouldn't it help if we actually spent some time working with people and the software that they've worked on?

When it all comes down to it, aren't we really looking for how we connect our true passionate curiosity with each other?

Software Freedom Law Center

Eben Moglen heads up this new organization, the Software Freedom Law Center, to "provide provide legal representation and other law related services to protect and advance Free and Open Source Software." The center has been established with a $4 million fund raised through the OSDL.

Note that the free assistance is only available to eligible (i.e., non-profit) F/OSS projects that can't afford their own legal representation. The center will also provide services on a fee basis.

Binary XML?

Well, there's seems to be a fair bit of discussion lately about various approaches to making XML less of a bloated sack of protoplasm. Technically speaking there's a Sun article on talking about the Fast InfoSet draft specification. More generically speaking, here's a CNet article asking: How do we make XML faster?

• If binary XML is the answer, what exactly is the question?
• If XML is the answer, what is the question?
• Why are people using XML for so many things that it's horrible for?

IMHO, all of this stems from the fact that people have been mislead by XML's name into believing that XML is a language when XML is really just a data format. Very sad.

It's about about the language

The Furious Purpose blog entry,Mock roles, not objects mentions a paper given at the last OOPSLA on how to think about mocking in terms of roles that need to be fulfilled. Partly, the blog entry is about the benefits of TDD (Test-Driven Development). If you're not hip to TDD yet, check out Kent Beck's book Test Driven Development: By Example.

In my mind, however, there's something a bit more fundamental and interesting underlying this discussion... That is, answering the question: what's the language that is being created? In the Furious Purpose example, it's a language that is manifested as a programmatic API in Java starting with a user login story. As programmers, that fact that we are creating and manipulating languages seems about as obvious as water is to a fish but that is precisely why I think it's something worth thinking about -- we are so easily caught up in the leaves that we miss the trees, the forest, and the bulldozer that is about to run us over.

MacWorld 2005: Boom and Bust

MacWorld Expo 2005 is the consumer-focused show/exhibit/conference for all things related to Apple Computers. I've been going to the show for the last two years because Steve Jobs is funny as a keynote speaker and because I switched to a 17" Al-PowerBook when they came out. Alas, in stark contrast from years past, Apple seems to have stopped giving out goodies to attendees of the keynote (which, lets face it, is the real reason that a geek would want to sit through hours of rah rah marketing amongst a sea of Apple fanatics :-). Now that you have some idea of my bias, here's my take what did and did not get announced...

iLife vs. iWork

Lots of improvements to the various applications which are part of the "iLife" suite (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, iPhoto, and GarageBand). Basically, the key takeaways are that Apple is lowering the price to $79, they seem to be listening to the user base and actually implementing a lot of features that people have been clamoring for (such as multi-track recording in GarageBand) while redesigning the internals (to better support e.g., RAW image formats and Hi-Definition Video) and externals (to actually make the programs easier to use). There's definitely a lesson in there for software developers.

Apple also introduced the new iWork suite of so-called productivity applications. [I qualify such things as "so-called" because of the inordinate amount of time and effort that we spend using them but that doesn't result in anything useful.] iWork consists of a significantly upgraded Keynote presentation maker and the new Pages document maker. I call Pages a document maker rather than a word processor because it's really targeted at the user who wants to quickly create various types of complete documents. How so? One of the areas that Steve Jobs hammered on in the keynote is how all of the Apple applications are trying to help users get started via e.g., "Themes" (ala Keynote), "Books" (aka photo albums in iPhoto), and "Templates" in Pages. I.e., Apple is working to help kickstart their users. That way, users can quickly focus on (a) adding content and (b) tweak the look rather than getting stuck in the purgatory that is a blank page. Yes, other folks have tried the same thing but it's definition instructional to see how a bit of extra focus on the aesthetics and actual user experience goes a long way. Lest I become repetitive, I'll refrain from saying that there's a lesson in there for software developers.

From a gossip- and conspiracy-addict's point of view, it's quite interesting to note how iWork does not contain either a spreadsheet or a personal-scale database. This is a deft deflection of the whole question of whether Apple is going to war with Microsoft in the work applications space. As with the iPod strategy, Apple is playing from their strengths and can slowly encroach into the MS Office market with each new generation of the suite. I don't know what Apple may be playing with in terms of spreadsheets but they certainly have a strong, existing community around the FileMaker database system. At $79 for the suite, there's hope yet that ridiculous pricing for office suites will be improving in the future -- but I won't be holding my breath.

mini-Mac

Oh, yeah, well that's what the new Mac mini should be called. There's plenty of folks getting all excited about this but I'm a bit skeptical. $499 sounds like a good price but that's for a machine which only has 256MB of RAM. Going to a realistic 1GB of RAM will cost you another $425 (buying it from Apple) -- that's highway robbery. To get a "Super" CD/DVD drive instead of the baseline "Combo" drive adds another $100. Apple is pitching the mini-Mac as a good machine for things like build farms (and hence, cheap render farms and the like) but note that the mini-Mac doesn't have gigabit-ethernet -- only 100Mbit.

Now, all that said, I think there are a couple of interesting markets where the mini-Mac will be effective. The first is to upgrade the machines of the relatives who are always bugging you to keep their MS Windows boxes running (but aren't anywhere near ready for e.g., Linux). If they already have a nice monitor then getting them a mini-Mac seems like a very reasonable option. I switched my Dad and one of my Aunts to 17" iMacs awhile back and even with the transition pains, my support load has dropped dramatically (i.e., it's almost all just senile user errors these days :-). The second interesting use is for people who travel but don't really need or can't afford a desktop replacement laptop. If you're not a power user then having a nice monitor, etc. at work and at home and just throw the mini-Mac in a bag and you're all set.

iPod Kerfluffle

Well, Apple finally answered my complaint about the high price of the iPod mini... Apple has released the iPod Shuffle. This time, they hit the price points spot on with a $99 base model which has 512MB of flash memory and a 1GB version for $149. The iPod shuffle is a brilliant answer to the flash-base MP3 player market. It's tiny, it has a very competitive price/capability ratio, and it's simple. The genius is that Apple simplified the entire model of how a flash-based player works. How? They completely got rid of the general purpose display. How can they do that and still create a usable device? They realized that all of the heavy lifting with the tiny device would be done in the iTunes software when you've connected the device to your computer. That is to say that Apple looked at the notion of mobile music playing as a complete system and focused making the systemic experience better. The iPod Shuffle is going to decimate the competition. There's a big lesson here for people who consider themselves architects.

Now, for some balance, the prices and capabilities of the iPod mini and the full-scale iPods still a bit sore spot. Given the unit volumes that Apple is selling iPods, the price/capability ratio sucks. I was hoping for a shock and awe announcement of a new high-end iPod that had built-in WiFi and support for WiFi delivered VOIP telecommunications. Now that would be a brilliant bit of sidestepping of the whole cellular carrier wars and would drive the mobile communication market into new territory.

Java Developers Get the Shaft

In the past, Apple has said that they care about Java. Alas, the patterns of fact show that to be a very arguable point. Java support on the Apple platform has always been and continues to be a third-class citizen. Heck, developers in general are only, at best, considered second-class citizens by Apple. The fact is that the Mac OS X 10.4 ('Tiger') release is at least 6 months late and that Apple has locked Java v1.5 to the Tiger release. Jobs was extremely vague about the release date for Tiger, saying that it will be out in the first half of 2005. That means that Java v1.5 support on the Apple platform will be about 1 year behind the Sun FCS release. Yeah, sure, that's commitment to Java and Java developers. Various folks have been pestering Apple to release a version that runs under the current Mac OS X 10.3. The gossip that I've heard is that Apple has cut back on the staffing of the Java team and just doesn't have the resources to make that happen. For shame! Of course, there are lessons in here about how backwards businesses are in their indignant misunderstanding of the value of developers as business catalysts but I won't bore you with that rant. :-)

JCK's New Bait-n-Switch Licensing

Sun's Graham Hamilton has just announced the release of the Java Compatibility Kit (JCK) for J2SE under a read-only license.

Whoopity do!

If, heaven forbid, one wants to actually use the JCK at all, you are required to either submit to the onerous SCSL (Sun Community Source License) or upcoming JDL (Java Development License). If you want to use it commercially, you have negotiate a commercial license with Sun (at least $50,000.00).

Geez, doesn't this remind you of Microsoft's incredibly lame "shared source" insanity?

As always, I'm a firm believer that, hey, it's Sun's property and they can do whatever they please with it but Sun's mealy-mouthed, half-assed, Janus-faced approach to "opening" up Java is, frankly, insulting. Sun: if you want to continue with your dictatorial control of Java, just be honest and say so but stop all of the weasely, self-righteous BS -- or return to your bold roots and get serious about truly opening Java up to the world.

Sun to meet with IBM on open-sourcing Java?

Eweek is claiming that, in reponse to IBM's open-letter to Sun to open-source Java, unnamed sources at Sun are telling Eweek that Sun representatives will meet with IBM to discuss open-sourcing Java.

IBM's open lettter to Sun: Open-Source Java

In response to Sun's Simon Phipps' rant about Eric Raymond's open letter to Sun to open-source Java, IBM Vice President Rod Smith has called for Sun to open-source Java in a letter to Sun Vice President Rob Gingell. Smith offers IBM's support to create an independent organization to control Java.

Sun's Phipps rants on Raymond's open-source rant

In an article in the UK's PC Pro magazine, Sun fires back over Open Source Java accusations, Simon Phipps, Sun's Chief Technology Evangelist and java.net blogger, rails about Eric Raymond's recent open letter to Sun, Let Java Go.

Seems pretty clear that both sides make some points and miss their marks. I don't have the time right now into a blow by blow analysis but I will say that I'm personally sick and tired of Open-Source fanatics saying that everything should be open sourced. It's Sun's property and they can do whatever they want to do with it (whether we like it or not). On the other side, I'm equally sick and tired of Sun saying that they do NOT have any extra level of control over the rest of the JCP powers -- that's patently false -- check out my earlier blog on that particular subject, Open, Independent JCP?.

Would you like fries with that?

According to this EWeek article, Sun has a promotion through June, 2004 wherein a purchase of Sun's Java Studio Enterprise product subscription also gets you an AMD Opteron-based SunFire server.

The catch is that the subscription cost is $1500 per year with what looks like a 3 year commitment.

I do like the switch to focusing on the hardware as a support for the software.

JSR 166, A Case Study

Check out my Artima blog entry on the case study of JSR 166: Concurrency Utilities.

A Security Analysis of the Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE)

Four security experts, including David Wagner and Avi Rubin, have published their critique of the so-called Secure Electronic Registration and Voting Experiment (SERVE) system.

What their report boils down to is that SERVE is catastrophically flawed.

Alas, since the inescapable conclusion doesn't fit with the desired outcome of people like the Pentagon, there's a lot of spin being spouted trying to drown the report in FUD. The one that I've heard the most is the implication that the silence by the rest of the peer-review expert group equals (a) disapproval of this report and (b) approval of the SERVE system. The silence of those other experts just means that it's not politic of them to tell the truth publicly.

Lego backs off from killing Mindstorms?

I recently wrote about Lego killing Mindstorms. It seems that Lego just put out a press release saying:

Hearsay has it that a product range like LEGO MINDSTORMS is no longer in focus. This is not true. On the contrary, MINDSTORMS, CLIKITS and BIONICLE are all good examples of products the company wants to stake on.

Well, there you go.

Lego kills Mindstorms

Yahoo news reports that Lego is going to kill off the geekily popular Lego Mindstorms.

Basically, Lego, as an organization, just never learned to adapt to the high-paced world of high-tech toys. Heck, they didn't get the whole trend / tie-in toy market either. So, they lost a lot of money and now their going to try to deal with the consequences by retreating back into their old, core market.

Hmm... Anybody interested in creating a venture to take over that market and do things the seriously fun, geek way?

Talibanism in Technology?

Deepa Kandaswamy articulates his "seven reasons why women in technology remain invisible..." in Talibanism in Technology.

What do you think? Aside from the sensationalistic title, is there really a problem? If so, what's the process by which to address it?

Apple Flashers

Luckily for us, Steve Jobs debuted the iPod mini in his MacWorld 2004 conference keynote. It's tiny and very slick. Even better, the control felt pretty nice. Alas, in all too typical Apple style, the $249 price tag is just plain silly -- they should have hit the $199 price point.

Apple does get the Best Revisionist Video Award for reshowing their seminal 1984 TV commercial with an iPod digitally inserted onto the body of the running woman. Alas, I must say that the giveway of a poster of the ad was a big let down.

Long-term, there are two other announcements that I think are much more important. First off, Jobs also debuted the new G5-based Xserve and Xserve RAID servers. It seems that Apple is finally starting to actually put in the serious enterprise-class features like EEC memory and "dual" everything. I'm going to have to actually consider them now.

The biggest announcement is the new iLife '04 application with the non-i name... GarageBand. GarageBand is basically a music making program. Now, I'm no music software geek but the demo with Jon Mayer was very impressive -- especially supported guitar instruments. Create a garage band without the garage or the band (or any talent :-)! Mayer said that if he had this when he was 13, he would have never left his room.

Progress or Constipation?

Jim Cushing talks about three phases in his Personal Progress blog today: Inquisitive, Complacent, and Emboldened.

I often find it more productive to look at the stages of personal progress via the classic growth cycle of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and senescence.

Microsoft Clarifies Intentions to Retire JVM-Based Products

Earlier this week, I blogged about Microsoft phasing out products which depend on Java. Well, the agile marketing arm of Microsoft has flexed its muscles again with... Microsoft Clarifies Intentions to Retire JVM-Based Products.

Basically, all they have done is pushed the drop dead date back one measely week and are more precise about which products are getting whacked. Yawn.

More on "Java Desktop System"

There's a big thread over on /. about the "Java Desktop System".

Note clearly that the thread contains the typically low signal-to-noise ratio that /. is so famous for. You have been warned! :-)

The Poetry of Programming

The Poetry of Programming is an interview with coding poet (or "poetic coder"?) Richard Gabriel. Check it out.

Microsoft phasing out products which depend on Java

Microsoft is citing the settlement over Java with Sun as the reason that Microsoft is pulling the plug on a number of versions of various products. Here's an article from Eweek that goes into more depth on this.

I particularly like this bit of spin from Microsoft:

"We will not ship products that include a piece of software we can not provide security fixes for, thus we are phasing out some older products and re-releasing some older products without the VM. This applies to all channels." --Tony Goodhew, Microsoft Developer Division

Of course, this is also a good excuse for Microsoft to push customers to pay for expensive upgrades.

"Raving" Lunatics?

Dan Steinberg mentions:

Vincent's post about the dependence of Sun tools on NetBeans seems to imply why Sun is not prepared to fold or merge NetBeans into Eclipse.

when talking about Vincent Brabant's blog entry about "Project Rave" and my blog entry about NetBeans staying separate from Eclipse.

Indeed, Sun's own Rich Green has talked about Sun's concerns of that they not "abandon the constituents" (users) of NetBeans. Green also expressed his concerns over IBM's domination of the Eclipse project. Gee, that certainly makes it sound like the negotiations fell through because both sides fought about control over the merged project.

So, even with these nominally open source projects, to the people/organizations involved, it's still all about who's the boss.

Sun bails on NetBeans merger with Eclipse

It seems that Sun has chosen to discontinue discussions about coalescing NetBeans with Eclipse.

From the perspective of Java developers, does this really make any difference? The competition seems to be helping make both platforms improve faster than they otherwise might.

However, from the perspective of trying to grow the Java developer market, especially w.r.t. the Microsoft juggernaut, the lack of a dominant development platform is a bit of a detriment.

"Java Desktop System"?

Well, Sun is releasing their so-called Java Desktop System this week. What, exactly, is the "Java Desktop System"? Plain and simple: it is Sun's Linux distribution focused on desktop users. Of course, Sun has too much invested in things like Solaris (which is losing market share since The Bust (and I'm not even going into the loss of mind share)) and Java for them to be clear in their marketing messages.

Okay, let's hear Sun's official story of the naming of the Java Desktop System:

Q. Why was the product name Sun Java Desktop System selected?

A. Java technology plays a very important role in the Java Desktop System - the Java Virtual Machine is integrated, the Mozilla browser is Java-aware, Java is the preferred development environment, etc. To reinforce this, we have selected the name Sun Java Desktop System.

Yeah, sure, uh-huh, whatever. Did you notice how little actual Java there is in the "Java Desktop System"? Yep, in amongst all of those applications that users are going to actually care about such as the GNOME desktop and the Star Office application suite, Sun installs the JDK and JavaWebStart.

Now, since flogging the Solaris brand against Linux is about as succesful as Hollywood's Solaris movie was at making money, Sun is betting the farm in their ability to market "Java Everywhere". So, Sun is going to flog "Java" (to death?) by slapping "Java" on more or less everything that they are trying to sell. Gee, as if the term "Java" isn't already way too overloaded (is it a language or a platform or a mindset or a community or one product or 8,000 products or...). Let's face it, Sun has pretty much always sucked at marketing and I don't see this as any sign of improvement.

Can this flogging of "Java" possibly be a good thing? Can Sun carve out a niche using a "Red Hat Enterprise Linux but we sell hardware too" approach?

China options push Sun to consider open-source J2EE app server?

Hmm... Opening up the Chinese market (that won't pay the ridiculous licensing fees anyway) through the hearts and minds of the developers and hoping that will convince them to buy (expensive) Sun hardware? I'm not so sure about that. Will they buy Sun's services? Perhaps but I'm not going to hold my breath.

In terms of the perennial Sun boogeyman that is Microsoft, going with a viral license such as the GPL would be excellent. Just think... Sun suing Microsoft for violation of the GPL and therefore the GPL getting seriously tested in court!

Lame "survey" on Java reliability

First off, let me question the fact that nowhere is it listed in the article that we can't actually get a copy of the survey and survey results without signing up for one of Wiley Technologies seminars (i.e., sales pitches). Tsk, tsk, tsk.

Now, without a much better idea of the actual contents of the survey it's ridiculous to rely on any of the so-called results of the survey. Let's just say, for the moment, that I'm skeptical all around all of the numbers. I call on Wiley Technology to provide the full survey and results to one and all so that we can decide for ourselves.

Apache Software Foundation working on new/updated software licenses

There are a number of proposed changes to the various Apache softwware license agreements. There's a mailing list on which to discuss these issues (along with the obligatory list archives.

Given how many projects and companies use Apache licensed software, I think it would be A Really Good Idea(tm) for as many people as possible to seriously check out the proposed changes and participate in improving them.

JavaOne 2003: Java's Debutante Ball

Check out my article looking back on the weird and wondrous happenings at this year's JavaOne show.

Opinions on the JRL (Java Research License)

Dan Steinberg put together this discussion between a number of the Java.net folks on the new Java Research License.

Sitting With The Audience

Danese Cooper wrote about the pros and cons of sitting in the front row as a Sun employee. Let me be so bold as to recommend to Sun, Key3Media, and all of the other folks who put on developer conferences to try two experiments...

First, just get up and wander around a bit and then sit down somewhere much farther back in the audience. Be Brazilian (as John Gage would say) and actively chat with (i.e., listen first and then respond to) the folks around you. If you're really daring, take along a big stack of your business cards and give them to the folks you actually chat with so that they can continue to chat with you in the future.

Next, try the same thing but without wearing your corporate logo-wear and big-wig badge.

Sure, it would be difficult for Scooter and his huge posse' of handlers, assistants, and bodyguards, but I think that a lot more of the rest of the Sun crew would have interesting and useful experiences than their trepidation would indicate.

Finally, let me note how important it is to do these by yourself! I am continually amazed at how clique-ish folks are and how insidiously that excludes most of the people that have something important to say.

Innovation Everywhere!

Dan mentioned the first use at this conference of Bill Joy's, "Innovation happens elsewhere" second-hand quote. Now, that's the fine and dandy sound bite but...

Innovation happens everywhere. That's the nature of life. Alas, it just so happens that it often gets ignored or otherwise overrun by various kinds of steamrollers.

Xtina Schwartz?

NOT!

Jonathan Schwartz "channeled" Xtina at this morning's keynote. For a few seconds there, he really had the audience believing that Christina Aguilera was a surprise guest.

Schwartz played off the let down with: "We're just a bunch of geeks."

Aguilera has gotten onto the Java bandwagon with the launch of the new consumer Java technology portal where she's helping to promote the notion of Java Mobility being cool.

Luckily for us, Schwartz didn't get down and Dirrty.

Will Java.net supplant the JCP?

Interesting article about java.net's potential vs. the continued crumbling of the JCP (Java Community Process).

The main take away for me is that Sun is putting out some effort to work better with the larger community.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.